Reflections of a True Millennial

Hello hello, This week we had 85 people in sacrament meeting, a new high for my time here. (Probably because of my great talk on the Sabbath last week. Just kidding). But it was a great turnout, and from our sector we had 10 less active members, 4 converts, and 5 investigators in attendance. On Monday we had a noche de hogar with a family that includes two wayward youth, and committed them all to be on Church on time. We picked them up on Sunday morning and the kids were even in white shirts and ties. It was a good Sunday for us. On Saturday we had a branch activity celebrating September 18th and October 12th (just a little late). We were at the Church almost the whole day, and we had a great turnout from members, investigators, and less actives. It was a fun day full of ping pong, futbol, games, and lots of food. We had tons of asado, choripan, empanadas de pino, roscas, and mote con huesillos. Mote con huesillos is probably the weirdest thing I have had here so far, I´ll include pict...

Hola a todos, Today we played football (the American kind) for P-day, hence the email subject. It was a good time. Chile is a great place, but definitely missing out on American Football. But anyway, it has been a good week here in San Clemente. These past few days we have spent a lot of time having members accompany us for lessons. It is hard when you get people to go out and then can´t get in to visit anyone (that was usually my experience with the PL elders..) But I really like having members with us, as it strengthens them and us. Since the branch is pretty small,. we are actually assigned as Home Teaching companions with the Elders quorum presidency, and we did work with that this weekend. Also I gave a talk in sacrament meeting yesterday. It´s kind of weird to think that I can talk for màs o menos 15 minutes straight in Spanish with no problem. The Spanish has actually been really good lately. Living with Elder Vasquez has helped a lot, as I have to talk and listen to Spanish to ...

Hola hola, Today I am writing a bit early because we have fun things planned for the rest of the day. Today is the 151st anniversary of the city of San Clemente and they certainly know how to celebrate! For four days straight there has been a carnival/fair in the town plaza with parties and music going well into the night. There has also been a rodeo and lots of other activites. We haven´t been able to participate in much obviously, but are going to the carnival later today. On Friday there was a parade past the plaza and we were able to watch that. They invited all religions to give a prayer, so Elder Bustamante represented The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It was cool to be up there with pastors and preachers from the other churches. The mayor even gave a shout-out to the Mormons in his speech and was very kind to us. It was a cool event. This week I went on divisions and stayed in Piduco, another area in Talca, one night. It was fun to be with other elders and work in...

Hola Hola, Another week down in San Clemente. It has been a good week, and General Conference was awesome.  This week we did a lot of contacting again, which I am not very good at.. I can never think of how to just start conversations with people, but I am working on being better at that. Maria is progressing well towards her baptism on October 17th, and this week we taught her the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity (luckily no problems there). Conference was great of course, and even more special as a missionary. We watched at the Stake Center in Talca. There was an English broadcast in a room upstairs for all of the gringo missionaries. Being in a city and going out between sessions reminded me of being in Salt Lake last year for conference. My favorite talk was the first one from President Uchtdorf. His advice to ask ourselves if we are making our discipleship too complicated and to ¨start where you are¨ was very comforting. I also loved the talk from Elder Allen D. Haynie, which is...